


clockwork

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-19
Updated: 2011-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-15 19:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>White-collar workers dreaming of more. Soon they'll realise that great things don't have to be huge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clockwork

Happiness is subjective. But so is loneliness. They're not lonely, but sometimes, they have visions that maybe happiness is more than this, that it's more about glory and greatness and doing the unthinkable, the unfathomable, changing the face of the earth, leaving a mark, not being forgotten, and less about white picket fences and being proud when your kid graduates from college. Everyone has dreams. The trouble is less than 5% get what they want.

 

 

Steven has a thing about statistics. He collects them, remembers them, searches for them between articles in the newspaper, about everything, everyone. Sometimes, conversation brings them to mind at dinner parties; sometimes, he tells whoever seems to be listening and other times, he just bites his lip or drinks his wine. Alex says it's a silly habit. He wants to ask which habits aren't silly. He bites his lip then, too.

The truth is that when you can't control something, you want to know everything about it. (When you can't have something, you become obsessed with it.)

Statistics are blunt things. They make their point without any beating around the bush. He likes that, wishes people would be like that more often. But that would disrupt a lot of things and ruin the rest. That's what their lives and the majority of six billion more are based on: waiting for everything to mean something, waiting for understanding, and becoming comfortable with the stagnancy.

Steven wants more. He can't do anything about it (he wasn't part of that 5%), so, instead, he doesn't dream about what he wants, but keeps it near in his consciousness, makes sure it hurts enough, every second of every day. Deep down, he hopes that one day, all the little things will be able to make him choose to forget the pain.

 

 

Steven doesn't know yet that in the 95%, there is a special fraction. This is the part who were absolutely certain, at one point or another, that they had gotten what they wanted. Xabi's not about statistics. Not about probabilities, four in five or one in ten. He's not about interesting facts or curiousities. Not about being sure, seeking comfort in a delusion that you can in fact control this or that or the other (he knows you can't ever). Instead, he's about reasoning. There's no such thing as fact: people aren't all the same (he believes in specificity and not lumping everything together into stereotype); they can't all be predicted. But everyone does everything for a reason. Because this is all they know, and they don't know if there's something at the end of it all to mean something, so _this_ has to mean something: they have to try to be happy. There's nothing else in the universe, nothing in the future more important than what's happening right now, in our homes, our bedrooms, or our minds. It's all about this. The ones who think there's more and live with that in mind are cowards. The ones who waste all of it, who are too afraid to ask someone out or tell someone how much they hate them, these are the ones to be pitied.

Xabi goes to university and gets a business degree because he thinks he wants it and that everything we want is automatically good for us (he doesn't know how much we can really deceive ourselves—we can makes ourselves believe anything if we try hard enough). He moves to England, gets a job, gets married, gets ready to settle down, because he thinks he wants it. Then he realises there is no logical mechanism behind wanting. Wanting implies we don't have, we don't know. Wanting is only the beginning, an experiment, a test. The truth is we have no idea what will make us happy. We try, we make mistakes, we pick ourselves up and try again. (Sometimes, we never really get it right; maybe our lifespans aren't long enough. But it's when we give up that we're truly miserable. The trick is to keep trying.) This is the reasoning.

(Xabi uses his reasoning like Steven uses his statistics. They both want to know that although they can't control it, they can understand it—they can protect themselves.)

Xabi's forgotten how to dream, because he's desperate for this to be enough.

 

 

Steven's not selfish. He loves his kids; he has enough money to drive a car he doesn't hate and go out some nights. He chose this, chose it, and it should make all the difference. Sometimes, all it does is make him feel a little better. Or makes him hate himself. He hates that he can make himself resent it (it's easy, really, to make yourself feel how you want—but you have to choose it). He's started going through life like he's walking under water, like how you can listen to a song for weeks on end and still not know the words, because you aren't _really_ listening; you surround yourself with it, but none of it gets through to you. He does his work like he's sleepwalking, only gets relief when he's actually asleep. It's not a mid-life crisis. He's not in mid-life. Everyone's uncertain sometimes. Ordinary people. Extraordinary people. He talks to clients and wonders if their spouse is cheating on them or if their kid wants to kill them. He wants it to be interesting, wants it to matter. He's bored, so bored. And tired.

He goes home and falls into bed, without even taking off his tie.

 

 

Xabi wears suits to work, and not the kind that makes you look handsome. The other kind, the one that's good for restraint, better than a straitjacket. The ones that say "Keep Away" when he's drinking coffee in a little corner shop or outside, in the cold, having a smoke. Nagore thinks he quit. He's started to lie more; he's noticed this. He never used to lie. People think you lie a lot when you're young: a kid, a teenager. It only gets worse as you grow up, start a family of your own. Lying becomes your life then. You kiss your boss's ass, you pretend to be nice to people because you're eager for connections, you manipulate and deceive. That's the Real World they talk about so importantly. But he's never lied to his family, not like this, not about things he's done, not about who he is. Everyone has secret thoughts; secret actions are a different matter. They're the ones that can tear families apart, ruin his wife and son's lives...

He's been here six years. He's ready to admit he can't take it anymore.

 

 

This is a fact even Xabi can't deny: they met a year ago in the strangest of circumstances.

 

 

Steven knows. People make friends in different ways. People like them need friends. People like them need people like them. The ordinary, run-of-the-mill lawyers and stockbrokers and writers and their wives, the nurses and secretaries. The ones with the routines (everything is routine) and jam-packed lives. They need a social life, too, to be complete. Hanging out with people just like yourself, complaining about bills and kids and work, being nice, filling up gaps in time. Usually, you build your groups with friends-of-friends, or friends-of-friends-of-friends. It's like collecting trading cards or stickers, he thinks sometimes, the more you have the more respected you are. These people really do stick to you though. It's hard to get rid of them, unless you move or get a divorce, or unless they die, or _you_ die...

Steven isn't thinking about death while he's running, nor the mortgage or the last bit of shit he had to take from the boss. To be honest, a year ago, it was different. He was quite like everyone else. Life isn't wonderful, but he has a wife and two lovely girls, and this is where he was meant to be. He doesn't believe in destiny or that things could have happened any other way. They're happy. He doesn't particularly like his job but he does it to support his family and—they're happy.

Xabi's minivan has stalled on the route he takes every Saturday. These things don't happen: he doesn't believe in destiny. People walk in and out of your life everyday. Xabi could have easily been a _walker_. He didn't quite look like a _stayer_ , if Steven could be very frank. He could have simply helped him change the flat tire and left, with a, "no problem, mate," but it had to have been Nagore's birthday that day and Xabi had to, for once, take down the sign (it seemed to have gone with his suit jacket that had found itself on the grey asphalt sometime along the way).

He takes Alex to their house, Xabi smiles a lot more than he has in a while (and Steven can tell; he knows what it's like), and he starts thinking differently of People Like Them.

 

 

Most people are contented with who they are, once they're not on the streets or starving, once they have people, family, friends. Only a few are lucky to have that "more," the rich and famous, the tremendously successful. But no one remembers the rest and this can be the scariest fucking thing in the world.

Xabi was content. He was like everyone else in the world: nice enough, hates confrontation, likes some things too much and dislikes others too much, has habits that make him think he's unique (of course, he is, because everyone is—everyone is the same and everyone is different). He does what he has to do: gets up every morning and goes to work, plays football with his son, throws birthday parties for his wife. Little things make him happy and it almost doesn't matter for a while that it may not mean anything. He doesn't even think of that; he doesn't lie and he's been trying to quit smoking for a while now. Nagore's supportive. She always is. She doesn't expect any more than he's given her already but she's still glad when he does, when he chooses to. It's not obligation and that makes it easier. He wants to.

He's happy because he's happy and not because he thinks he has reasons to be. It should always be like this.

 

 

Things start going wrong a few months later.

Alex is a little needier. Maybe it was this that drew him to her in the first place. Or maybe he's just a bastard.

He wants it to be enough. But giving only leads to more giving. Commitment leads to more commitment. Sometimes, pretending leads to more pretending. Lying leads to more lying.

There are the lies we tell and the lies we live.

 

 

He doesn't know why he calls him. Surely, there are other people. Xabi is in the middle of cooking dinner and expecting a call from Mikel when the phone rings. He answers in Spanish. He never answers in Spanish unless he's expecting a call from home. Steven knows this, but doesn't know how it ever came up in conversation.

Xabi is just different, he guesses. He's interesting. They're both ordinary people, but Xabi has always been different. He knows this, can feel it. It's like when, sometimes, at parties or restaurants, they're the only two who don't laugh at the joke, because they're too distracted. (And no one else notices—this is another reason, he thinks.) Maybe Steven is wondering about that girl, Susan, from the office and the way she always flirts with him, the way she calls him 'Mr. Gerrard' in that silky tone... and whether having an affair is as exciting as it looks on telly. Maybe Xabi is wondering if this was the right thing, if he should just quit his job and go back to Spain, lie on the beach all day and refuse, for once, to get up in the morning, put on a jacket and tie and kiss his wife and son goodbye, like clockwork, like it's been for years, forever.

Xabi has that way he's polite to everyone, like he's at work taking a call or speaking to the bloody Prime Minister. It's necessity, has always been. Steven just wants people to like him, like everyone else.

But he's lying on his couch now and he calls Xabi. He realises they haven't talked much, one-on-one, but when they did, he learnt more than any time they've spent with other people.

A waste of time—maybe it's all a waste of time—every second you spend pretending to like someone so that they'd like you too or pretending to be impressed by them so they'd feel good about themselves.

Waste of time.

All the times Alex asks, "How was your day?" in that monotone, like clockwork. She cares, she loves; it's all for her and his kids. Maybe he wants that to be enough sometimes. Maybe he wants to not have to spend time in rooms with garbled voices all around that mean nothing. Pretentious little people, lying to each other about how their new haircut suits them or their diet is certainly working. It's all meaningless.

Maybe he wants meaning sometimes. And not clockwork.

"Steven?"

"Yeah. It's me."

(Why do we waste time on pleasantries? There should be a statistic for that—like the one that says, "We spend one-third of our lives sleeping." It should be: "Of everything that comes out of our mouths, half of it is bullshit people tell us we should say.")

"Are you drunk?"

( _I wish I was more drunk._ )

"Rough evening. How are you?"

"Okay. Sure you're alright, Steven?"

( _You sound like you're talking me off the ledge. Maybe you are._ )

"Wanna meet me for a drink tomorrow?"

"Okay. Where?"

He thinks they must have broken a record for most bullshit in a conversation, those three minutes. Xabi's different, but he's a coward. There's a difference between telling the truth and being truthful. Sometimes, the former is a lot harder.

 

He decides he can say it face-to-face.

They meet after work.

"She hasn't said anything since. We don't talk anymore. No one talks anymore. It's like I feel like she can't answer my questions anymore so I just don't bother to ask."

"Maybe they're the wrong questions."

He remembers when Alex used to like his stupid habits. Remembers when they used to hang out in his apartment and he used to disappear to wash his hands for the tenth time, telling her he had forgotten he had to call someone or something really tactless like that. Remembers when she found out and thought it was 'cute.' The first girl who didn't think it was completely weird.

She's changed—none of it's enough anymore. Maybe he's not her answer either. Not anymore.

"How are the girls?" It's not obligation (so unlike Xabi)—he wants to know and Steven is grateful.

"They're... I wish I spent more time with them, you know? Stuff is crazy. Lilly has some lad trying his luck, did you know? Poor fella."

He smiles. He likes it when honesty and normalcy coincide, thinks it happens far too rarely.

He wants to say something outrageous or true, something they're not supposed to say, but he kind of knows there'll be more time for that.

Instead, he lies on the grass in a park staring at the sky like he used to when he was a kid, on the football pitch, still in his sweaty kit, while Xabi sits on a bench, looks out at the lake, thinks about the sea in Spain.

He takes him home when he's sobered up. And he hasn't said anything, but at the front door, he turns and asks, "Haven't you ever dreamed? Who says he have to stop now?"

He used to dream.

 

 

No one dreams of small things; they only dream of great things. They'll start to realise that not all great things have to be huge.

 

 

If Steven's forgotten how to give, Xabi doesn't know how to stop. Nothing's been about him for ages; he thought he didn't want it to be. He's never particularly liked attention; he was content to fade into the background. Then, there was Steven.

It was sudden. It started with one bad night and soon felt like it was never going to end. He didn't ask much, talked mostly, but the way he did it, the things he said made him feel like it was about him instead. It's like the way you sometimes take more pleasure in hearing about other people's experiences that they did actually doing it. But it wasn't pleasure: it was feeling; it was life, for the first time in maybe forever, maybe since he was a kid.

They go out, get drunk (Steven always more, because Xabi knows his limit, or he just wants to remember it in the morning—every morning), find someplace to sober up, don't get home until long after midnight.

Alex screams at Steven; Nagore is silent, but doesn't show anything but her back to him until he leaves in the morning.

Steven's hung over until lunch. Takes lots of pills, drinks lots of coffee. Probably doesn't remember or remembers everything.

Xabi doesn't think of anything but him until he calls, asks him when and where.

It's routine, another routine. But it's not the one either of them are ever supposed to have. It's not clockwork. It's not meaningless.

 

 

There's only a small percentage of people in history, in the past, in the present, who've done what can be considered traditionally great. Inventors, artists, politicians. The ones who changed the world. Everyone else just changed themselves; they adapted to what was already there. But it can be argued that everyone depends on everyone else. Without the laymen, there would be no great men, and maybe, vice versa. Each level of society is relevant. Everyone is connected in some way or the other, even people you've never met, don't even know exist: if you like the same band, or your favourite colour is blue, or if you wanted to be an astronaut when you were ten years old. You live, maybe, thousands of miles and oceans apart or a million social divisions apart, but you all have a purpose, and maybe that purpose can be the same from time to time. There's a purpose of society itself: for everyone to belong. Of course, we're never sure if we do. That's called being human, and it's what it's all based on, what it all has to be based on. Because there's nothing else.

"What did you want to do? Growing up, I mean?" Steven asked, a beer bottle being tipped to his lips, and it's taken a long time.

"I wanted to...write. Up until my last day of high school. My parents, they never would have let me. Thought... __knew it wasn't profitable, knew it wasn't realistic."

"Nothing's impossible."

"Well, nothing was possible for them."

"When did you give up, give it up?"

"I didn't until graduation, when I officially had my degree in accounting."

"And then it all changed."

"Then it all changed."

"And you?" Xabi asks a second later.

"Played football all through high school. Parents didn't get it. They made me stay home to study for some goddamned Math test the day they knew Scouts were coming to see me play. Didn't give up until they sent me to college. I didn't touch a football for years."

"Ever forgave them?"

"Did you?"

"Life's short."

"Exactly."

Steven didn't, pretended he'd forgotten; Xabi pretended to, never did forget.

 

 

Xabi takes him to a match, a surprise, Champions League, late, because it seems that's the only time they can trust to be alone together. Steven hasn't had daydreams about that girl in his office for a while, yet things with Alex were at their worst. It's all changed. He doesn't need it, doesn't want it, wants something else. Wants to play pretend. Wants to live another life, wants to have things to lie about, wants his life to not be a lie, this lie: a replacement, a second choice, something not chosen but forced upon him... The grass is green (and he thinks, ironically, of that old saying), red and blue shapes moving on it not mechanically but fluidly, and that could have been him, he could have been on the other side of the television screen or the touchline.

Sayings and statistics aside, the yearning's never decreased in intensity.

They go back to Xabi's house. He stands over his sleeping son for a while, just looking down. Then he leaves, shuts the door with a tiny sound like something loving.

Steven drops a glass, and a thick one, on the kitchen floor later. It doesn't shatter completely, but Steven swears, and it's miracle it wakes neither his son nor his wife. He'll think after that there's something about that sound he likes, that'll it'll be imprinted on the back of his mind for a long time: that harsh collision of glass on tile.

 

 

"What are we accomplishing? All we do it mope and moan. I don't get why it's supposed to help."

"But it is? Helping?"

"Yes."

"Ever read _Fight Club_? 'This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.' This is that. This is us trying to be in control of something for the first time in a long time."

Xabi doesn't ask questions again, but he starts to wonder, if it's changed, if they've changed each other or themselves.

 

 

Steven kisses him the first time they're both drunk. Xabi kisses back without even registering it. It's not clumsy or awkward, like they've been doing this forever, like they haven't had a drop of alcohol in their blood for ten years or more. It's natural as anything, but it's not predictable; it never was. They've learned how to be comfortable with the unpredictable, to be able to face anything that comes at them. They didn't have to before, convinced themselves that this was all there was to it, but then there was this, and then there was each other. A strange mix of being alert and entranced at the same time.

They go home earlier that night, but they meet again sooner rather than later.

They make love in the back of Xabi's car, and then sit on the hood, cigarettes between their lips, and Steven remembers that night in the park, wanting to say something outrageous. He wants to say something outrageous, something they don't say, wants to tell him he loves him. Feels, suddenly, like time is running out.

He doesn't say it.

 

 

He thinks afterwards, wonders about how they were drawn to each other like that without knowing, knowing anything, not about each other or their lives. None of it. (But stories, stories can't tell a fraction of that which is conveyed in the depths of eyes, or vocal tones, that which is absolute and unconscious. Unconscious truth.)

He listens to Steven talk, about anything, everything, words crass, nothing like anything he used to read when he was a kid, or dreamt of writing, did write, but somehow, it's like all of that and better, more, still. A rush of adrenaline. A shot of heroin. The pleasure and pain you feel the second you die.

Steven's not forgotten but phased out the memory of winning football matches, scoring goals, the taste of victory and cold metal between his teeth. He lets Xabi curl his body around his, languid, kisses his mouth and eyelids, and it all comes back.

It was better than anything you can imagine. (Or maybe, maybe, it's only this that is.)

 

 

It suddenly becomes less about them Before and more about them Together.

"Do you remember the first time we had a conversation?" Steven's taken to being a whole lot more sober (and Xabi figures, sometime, that this might be his downfall) and Xabi nods, with his mind at the same time flashing on a slightly windy balcony he'd wandered out onto with a drink six months before. Stevie was standing in the doorway. Mutual friends. Ironic. It always is and that becomes ironic too after a while. He asks him about work ("normal: boring, boss is a bitch, but it pays for the mortgage") and lets Steven ask ("long and tiring, clients are snobs, but we're probably going to have to buy a new car soon"). Then he asks him another they can't get around: why he's here.

"There are people who stay in one place for their entire lives. That's not me. There's so little time." _We don't know what's going to make us happy._

Steven feels, still, that there's something missing—that there always will be. He feels the regret, Xabi's and his own, and it's then that he sees something else in him, something other than the man at his wife's birthday party. Then he feels something different in himself.

Two months later, Alex tells him it's like he isn't even there anymore.

 

 

Xabi's never really learnt to feel about words, about poetry and prose. He knows when it's beautiful, when it's supposed to warm you from the inside out or chill you from the tips of your fingers and toes to your bones. But he's never really known how to enjoy it. It's casual language: you enjoy a book, or a film, a song. But what does it mean? Does it make you smile or sad? Does it cause you to feel something, cause you to _make_ yourself feel something? And what do you accomplish by that anyway? How do you separate feelings, filter them out, how do you say, "I am happy," without being overwhelmed, without letting beauty and magic and pure, pure love carry you away. It's difficult. You can enjoy food or enjoy sex or enjoy drugs, but you can't enjoy what you see true, true meaning in. Because there are layers and layers of emotion (in your art, in writing, in feeling swept away or so fiercely inspired that you can't sit still or focus your thoughts for a second) that cause you to hurt all over. Sometimes, that's all you can feel.

Xabi feels this way about love, this love.

 

Steven sees his club win a trophy in a faraway place and wonders the same. How happiness is supposed to rear its head before everything else. Of course, it doesn't. There are tears. Tears of what? Not of sadness, but of emotion that has no name. What do they get from it, how do they know what to feel, how do they know to be happy? Does it come from the brain? It seems impossible. There's no place inside you that stores, locks away, emotion. Where does it come from?

Where do you love from if not the heart?

 

 

They both know that after this, after all this, there is no other way to make them happy than to make themselves happy. It's all they've ever known, all they ever will.

 

 

Happiness is subjective. (So is loneliness.) There are different types, too. One is what you feel when you get everything you ever wanted and it's enough; it's everything. The other is when you realise that it's easy to be happy, something that's really difficult to recognise sometimes when you've been convincing yourself that it's a constant challenge, a fight, a struggle—to be happy, and _stay_ happy. It's when you realise that you've been happy all along, that it's always been enough, that wanting, and wanting and wanting and _waiting_ , is what makes you miserable sometimes, that it's only when you overthink something that it becomes uncomfortable, that making it harder does not always make it mean more, that great and big are not synonymous.

They both know when it's the last time. Xabi hasn't had a cigarette in two weeks, and Steven's been sober for two weeks. They meet on a Sunday, and in the morning (they haven't been able to face the sun before this—a new day, a day new that reveals what they struggle to accept), back on that park bench. They could have easily been on a picnic with their families. But they're alone. Alone together. And that's the only constant.

Steven says, "She's just given up, I think—she doesn't even argue with me anymore. It's...strange. So strange."

"We can't go back, Steven."

A nod, the first and only acknowledgement of this fact he's ever given.

"We have one life."

"We have one life," Xabi repeats. "But at least we're alive."

This is the first time they feel sorry for each other, for themselves. And it's also the first time they realise what they have. They had this, for a while, but it's not a lasting thing. (After all, they weren't _stayers_ , not in each other's lives.) It had to happen, and it also had to end. It's not permanent. Some things are. We all need that: permanency, clockwork. Whether you're a slave or a millionaire, that's all there is to it.

It's enough.

 

 

Xabi tells her he's gotten a job back home. She smiles, brightly and openly, probably the first time since he threw that surprise party for her. The people you meet along the way, the ones just like you (who used to have ambitions and dreams, maybe of this or maybe of more—who think they've gotten all they'll ever have), the ones who see what they want to see, what you want to be, what you should be, it's hard to get rid of them, unless you move or get a divorce or...

Xabi sells his car, moves out of his house, takes a plane back to San Sebastian with his son sleeping in the seat next to him.

Those people, you forget and they forget you. Some you never, ever will.

 

 

Steven stays at home that evening, watches TV with his girls, asks Lilly if she likes that boy down the street (she tells him she thinks he's weird; he smiles, says, _all boys are weird_ ). Alex comes in from the store. He offers to help her pack the groceries, then to cook dinner. He can't decipher the range of emotions on her face, but knows for once it's not bitterness. He says he's sorry, afterwards, for the last few months, that it'll never happen again. She stands on tiptoe to kiss him, like she used to, long ago.

He isn't thinking about death or that girl from work (he's forgotten her name); he's thinking about something Xabi said, not so long ago.

It all matters. It matters. Whether it gets you on the papers or gets you a raise or gets you nothing, it matters. If it's real, if it's truthful, then it matters.


End file.
